Farm 51

I am really thrilled with the latest additions and improvements to the Farm 51 game on Big Fish's Online Game Community. They've added a new skill, with new items to trade for and buy in order to train it. A new animal is available from the aliens. And they revamped the recipe making screen to be easier to use, it can still be rather slow at times when you have a lot of things to make, but there is now a "make all" button which makes things much simpler.

I'm still hoping there are more changes coming such as an even bigger storage solution and a faster recipe maker, both as trade items with the aliens preferably. And my roommate suggested they add a x2 or x4 button to make the waiting for crops and the like to grow go by faster.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the game, it is a farming game that happens to take place in an area frequented by aliens and "men in black" types. The aliens can be helpful or annoying depending on their mood, and once you can afford to establish a crop circle they are potential trade partners. The government types drop buy occasionally to raid your farm and steal your hard earned alien technology. There is a lot more to the game and it is both fun and addictive. It also can earn you a lot of tokens which can be redeemed for tickets in a Lottery type game.

It's one of my favorite of a large variety of games available as a part of the Big Fish game community. They also have an affiliate program called "My Game Space" which I joined (here's my page) , so the links I have to their sites can potentially earn me rewards.

In addition to the online game community, which has chat room based game play where tokens can be earned (sometimes even for the whole group), Big Fish Games also has an online game area, which allows for single player games, and of course downloadable full and demo games. If you like to own games for playing off-line, I recommend signing up for their game club at the annual membership level all game are available for purchase at $6.99 which is the best deal I've found. I can even afford them with my well below poverty level fixed income. Another bonus is if you wish to buy more than one game a month, you can simply purchase more credits at the same price.

They also appear to have more games available then most game sites, in part because they add a new one each day. About the only negative issue with Big Fish is that they have a no-return policy, figuring that the demo should tell you whether the game is one you'll want to keep or not. Personally, I've found that not always to be the case, but since they are so good about everything else I can put up with an occasional bad purchase.